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A garage door is the largest moving object in most houses, and for many families it is also the front door: it goes up and down more often than anything else on the property. Yet it is the one piece of machinery that never gets a service until it fails, usually at seven in the morning with the car on the wrong side of it. The question we hear on the driveway, once the immediate repair is done, is how often the door should have been looked at in the first place. This is the answer we give.
The schedule most homes should follow
Service interval by how the door is used
- Daily family use, one or two cars in and out: every twelve months.
- Heavy use, three or more drivers, tradie utes or a home business: every six to twelve months.
- Occasional use, a second garage or a holiday house: every two years, with a visual check each season.
- Any door older than about ten years, regardless of use: every twelve months, because the springs and opener are entering their last stretch.
- Commercial and industrial roller doors that cycle all day: every six months, sometimes quarterly under a maintenance agreement.
The reason the interval tracks use rather than age is that almost every part on a garage door wears by the cycle. Springs are rated in opens and closes, rollers lose their bearings a fraction at a time, and the opener's gear set wears with every lift. A door that goes up twice a week will take years to accumulate the wear a busy family door gathers in one. Age still matters, because rubber seals harden and the grease dries out whether the door moves or not, which is why the two-year ceiling applies even to a door that hardly moves.
What shortens the interval in Perth
Conditions around Perth push doors toward the shorter end of every range above. Summer heat cooks the grease out of hinges and rollers and dries the bottom seal until it cracks, and a west-facing door in the afternoon sun runs hotter than the air around it. Suburbs along the ocean deal with salt, which finds the springs and lifting cables first; a spring that would last a decade inland can rust through in a good deal less time near the water. Newer estates on sandy ground, and any house on an unsealed verge, get fine grit into the tracks and roller bearings every time the wind picks up. And the big run of homes built through the nineties and early two-thousands in Ellenbrook, Canning Vale and Joondalup are now reaching the age where original springs and openers are giving out in numbers.
None of that means the door is badly made. It means the annual visit is doing more work here than the same visit would in a milder climate, and skipping it costs more.
What a service actually covers
People sometimes assume a service is a squirt of lubricant and an invoice. A proper one is closer to a car service: a set list of checks and adjustments, done in order, with the door tested at the end. Ours, described in full on the garage door servicing page for Perth, works through the door from the bottom up: the seal and the panel joins, the rollers and hinges, the tracks and their fixings, the lifting cables and drums, the springs and their tension, then the opener, its chain or belt, the travel limits, the safety beams and the down-force setting. Anything worn gets pointed out and priced before it is touched.
The checks on a full service
- Door balance: the door is unhooked from the opener and lifted by hand to confirm the springs are carrying its weight.
- Spring condition and tension, cable fraying at the drum and the bottom bracket, and the drum set-screws.
- Rollers, hinges and their fixings; worn or seized rollers replaced, loose hinge bolts tightened.
- Tracks cleaned, checked for dents and bends, and re-plumbed if the fixings have moved.
- Opener force and travel limits reset, the chain or belt tensioned, and the safety reverse tested with a block on the floor.
- Photo-eye sensors cleaned and aligned, remotes and wall button checked, the battery backup tested where fitted.
- Every moving part lubricated with the right product for the job, and the weather seal inspected and replaced if it has split.
Balance is the test that matters
A door that stays put at waist height when you let go is balanced. One that drops or springs upward is asking the opener to do work the springs should be doing, and that is how openers burn out early. It is the single most useful thing a service checks, and the one almost nobody does at home.
Checks you can do yourself between services
A once-a-year visit only works if somebody is paying attention in the eleven months between. These take a few minutes and need no tools beyond a cloth and a can of the right lubricant:
- Watch and listen. Stand inside with the door running and notice whether it moves evenly, whether one side leads the other, and whether there is a new grinding, squealing or banging. A change in sound is usually the first symptom of anything.
- Wipe the tracks. Run a dry cloth along the inside of both tracks to lift sand and grit. Do not grease the tracks; they are meant to run dry, and grease just holds the dirt in place.
- Look at the cables. With the door closed, check the lifting cable on each side where it leaves the bottom bracket. Any frayed strand or rust bloom means a call, not a wait.
- Test the safety reverse. Lay a length of timber flat across the doorway and close the door. It should reverse the moment it touches. If it pushes on, the down-force or the sensors need attention.
- Check the seal. Run a hand along the bottom rubber. If it is cracked, hard or leaving a gap at the corners, replacing it keeps the weather and the reptiles out; the weather seals guide covers the options.
Leave the springs and cables alone
Owner checks stop at looking. Torsion springs, the cables attached to them and the drums they wind onto are under enough load to break bones if released, and the winding bars and technique to handle them are not household tools. Report what you see and let the service sort it.
Lubricating between services
Every three to four months, or more often through a hot summer, put a light spray of a silicone or lithium-based garage door lubricant on the hinge pins, the roller bearings (not the nylon wheel itself), the spring coils and the opener's chain or screw. Wipe off the excess so it does not attract dust. Skip WD-40 for this, since it is a cleaner rather than a lubricant and dries out quickly. The full method, product choices and what to avoid on a roller door curtain are in our guide to lubricating a garage door properly. Done regularly, it is the cheapest maintenance there is, and it is also the answer to the question we are asked most about noise.
Signs not to wait for the next service
Some symptoms are the door telling you a part is about to let go, and the annual date is irrelevant. A door that has become heavy to lift by hand, or that the opener strains and stalls on, is nearly always a tired or broken spring, and it should be looked at before the opener gives up too; the spring repair page explains what happens next. A cable hanging loose or wound unevenly on its drum, a door that sits crooked in the opening, a roller that has jumped out of the track, a loud bang from the garage with nobody in it, or an opener that reverses for no reason all belong in the same category. Stop using the door and book the repair.
How long a garage door lasts
The door itself, meaning the panels or curtain and the tracks, will usually outlast the house's second kitchen. Twenty to thirty years is ordinary for a steel sectional or roller door that has been kept lubricated and out of the worst of the weather. The parts that carry it are a different story: springs are consumables measured in cycles, openers wear out on a ten-to-fifteen-year horizon depending on make and use, and rollers, cables and seals sit somewhere in between. Servicing does not stop those parts wearing. It makes sure they are replaced on your schedule rather than theirs, and it keeps a worn part from taking a healthy one with it, which is how a stretched spring becomes a burnt-out motor.
Is servicing worth paying for?
The honest comparison is a service against the repair it prevents. A service is a fixed, modest job that leaves the door balanced, quiet and safe. A spring that snaps with the door up, a cable that lets go and drops a corner of the door, or an opener that burns out lifting an unbalanced door are each several times the price, and they arrive at the worst moment. What you pay depends on the door type and size, the opener, and whether anything found on the day needs replacing; the garage door service cost guide breaks down what drives it. There is no call-out fee and the price is agreed with you before any work starts, and worn parts are shown to you before they are replaced. Most services are booked and finished on the same day.
Your opener's own maintenance schedule is in its manual; B&D keeps a manual library by model, and WA Consumer Protection explains what to expect from any service you book.